By Hua Zhang
On December 24, Beijing time, US President Biden signed the National Defense Authorization Act for the Fiscal Year of 2023 (FY2023 NDAA) into law, which created a new high with a total sum of US$858 billion, about US$80 billion more than that in the previous year. This reveals that the world's strongest military power is still obsessed with beefing up its military capacity.
What's more noteworthy is that the document includes more than 50 pages on the Taiwan Island, even going so far as to say that the US would provide military financing for and sell weapons to the island. This not only violates the solemn commitment made by the US on the Taiwan question in the three China-US joint communiqués, but also goes against its still-fresh public statement made this year – the US doesn't support "two Chinas" or "one China, one Taiwan", doesn't seek to use Taiwan question as a tool to curb China, and has no intention to contain China.
There is an interesting detail. Soon after the US houses passed the FY2023 NDAA in mid-December, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities of Taiwan region went on ballyhoo about that the Act asked the US Congress to provide US$10billion of "free military assistance" to them in the next five years, and consequently sang a song of praise about the solid US-Taiwan relation. Yet only days later, the US Congress released the Consolidated Appropriations Act 2023 agreed upon by the two houses, which didn't contain a single word about providing an annual US$2 billion of "free military assistance" to Taiwan, but replaced it with "loans" that Taiwan has to pay back both principal and interests within 12 years.
The farce perfectly shows the US really takes Taiwan region as a chess piece. For many years, the US has been selling weapons to the island – seven times during Biden's term alone – against the three China-US joint communiqués, but every piece of those weapons comes at a price because they are paid for rather than being presented for free.
However, the pricy weapon orders are just bullets that the Taiwan authorities have to bite as Washington often sells them defective or outdated military equipment at a much higher price than other purchasers. Taiwan media reported that when Taiwan's so-called legislative agency reviewed the 2023 budget submitted by the "defense department" not long ago, it pointed out that Taiwan's armed forces received huge amounts of defective or subpar weapons and equipment from the US from2017 to 2021, for which the seller refused to make any compensation. Public opinions on the island condemned the DPP for paying gold for American garbage. When the US rakes in exorbitant profits from its arms sales to Taiwan and charges the island with protection fees to line the pocket of its own military-industrial enterprises, is that how a country would treat its "ally"?
In addition to Taiwan's finance, the US has recently also set eyes on its high-tech industry by forcing and coaxing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing to move its production lines of advanced chips to America on the grounds of maintaining "national security" and "industry chain stability". This will negatively affect Taiwan in many ways, including talent drain, investment outflow, moving out of supply chain, theft of business secrets, and weakening of defense capabilities.
On the one hand, the US is using Taiwan to contain China and even trying to ignite a conflict to disrupt China's rise; on the other hand, it is exhausting Taiwan of its capital and technology, getting ready to abandon this chess piece any minute. What a marvelous show of egoistic self-interests and "America first"!
As Taiwan newspaper China Times commented, from every point of view, Taiwan is being crippled and pushed to the edge of war day by day by the US, while Want Daily also said given the DPP’s engrained "pro-US and anti-China" ideology, the island is more likely to be reduced into a bargaining chip.
It has now become as clear as broad daylight who is the initiator of the Taiwan-Strait crisis and who is pushing the Strait to the brink of war. We advise the DPP authorities and other political forces in Taiwan to truly put at heart the wellbeing of the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait instead of following America's anti-China ploy for personal gains. If they keep doing that, they will only make themselves the historical sinners of the Chinese nation whose names will be nailed to the historical pillar of ignominy.
Editor's note: Originally published on china.com.cn, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
